The City and the Pillar (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Gore Vidal
- First Published: 1948
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The late 1930’s and 1940’s
- Setting: Rural Virginia, Seattle, Beverly Hills, New Orleans, the Yucatán, and New York City
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Murder or homicide, South or Southerners, New York City, 1940’s, 1930’s, California, West, U.S., New Orleans, Mexico or Mexicans
- Locales: Virginia, New York, NY, New Orleans, LA, Seattle, WA, Beverly Hills, CA, Yucatán, Mexico
Characters Discussed
Jim Willard, a homosexual youth, roughly seventeen years old and a high school junior at the beginning of the novel. He is tall and handsome, an athlete who has played both baseball and tennis, with short blond hair. In high school, Willard already has formed a sexual attraction to a male friend, Bob Ford, with whom he has his first sexual encounter while the two are on a summer camping trip. Willard is a romantic about love, regularly looking back in time to recapture the magic of his first idealized love, even in later affairs with a novelist, a Hollywood...
[The entire page is 963 words long]
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